


Love Like That

by Jaydeun



Series: Making Friends [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Sex Talk, Strong Female Characters, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 05:02:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20222236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydeun/pseuds/Jaydeun
Summary: “What do you mean, what’s it like?”Crowley didn’t look angry; he did look legitimately confused. Anathema leaned back against the glider’s dusty cushions and peered at him over the rim of her mug.“I’m pretty sure you know about the birds and bees,” she said. Crowley slid his sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose to reveal two rather alarmed snake eyes.“Please tell me you aren’t asking for the talk,” he said. “I’ve done that once already as Nanny and I don’t relish a second go.”





	Love Like That

**Author's Note:**

> I am part of a fiction exchange, but was unable to work out one of the prompts to advantage--so this is just a bit of extra fiction as an apology! Sometimes the brain goes its own way...Not beta'd.

“What do you mean, _what’s it like_?”

Crowley didn’t look angry; he did look legitimately confused. Anathema leaned back against the glider’s dusty cushions and peered at him over the rim of her mug.

“I’m pretty sure you know about the birds and bees,” she said. Crowley slid his sunglasses onto the bridge of his nose to reveal two rather alarmed snake eyes.

“Please tell me you aren’t asking for _the talk_,” he said. “I’ve done that once already as Nanny and I don’t relish a second go.”

Anathema giggled into her cocoa and pushed back against the glider until it rocked pleasantly.

“No, you goof. I want to know what it’s like for_ you_. And Aziraphale.”

She had not intended to short-circuit Crowley. But he’d been idly paging through a travel magazine on the cottage porch, and now his hand hovered in mid air like he forgot what it had been doing. She could still see his irises; not entirely easy to read, but the fixed and glassy stare meant she may have pressed a teeny bit too far for him.

“Of course, if you’re embarrassed about it—” she began. Crowley ah-hummed at her and shoved the glasses back in place.

“I’m not,” he insisted.

“Oh good!” Anathema leaned forward, putting her mug on the antique table and wrapping arms around her knees. “So? Is it like magic? Newt has a theory.”

“Newt. Has a theory,” Crowley groaned, throwing the magazine on the floor. Anathema wrinkled her nose and leaned in conspiratorially.

“Would you like to hear it? It’s ridiculous.”

“You are going to tell me anyway, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Witch.”

“Demon,” Anathema grinned. “He thinks you don’t touch to do it. That’s its cosmic brain sex. With rainbows and glitter, probably.”

“That’s amazing. It is exactly like that,” Crowley deadpanned. Anathema swatted him.

“It is _not_—it had better not be! I will have to kill myself if he’s right about something so stupid.” –In fact, they had a bet, and she intended to win it—“Besides. I would be seriously disappointed.”

Crowley had not actually moved through most of this, but now he stood up abruptly.

“You are _serious? _This is a serious question?” He walked a tight circle around the small front porch. “Why in hell’s name would you want to know?”

Anathema made a mental note; she’d won the first part of the bet. Aziraphale and Crowley were, in fact, fucking.

“I can tell you about me and Newt first, if that would help?” she offered. Crowley looked as though he didn’t know what to do with his hands for a moment. Or his legs. He threw himself back into the wicker chair opposite.

“Don’t you dare,” he grimaced. “There are some people I don’t want to envision in the throes of passion. Newt is one.”

“What about—?”

“You neither,” he said, pointing a thin finger at her.

“Oh come _on_,” Anathema rolled her eyes. “Sex is sex. Everybody does it. You’ve got regular bodies… I assume?”

Crowley was giving her a side-eye she could feel right through his glasses. Then he did the dramatic lip curl, half a snarl, half a _I-don’t-know-how-to-use-my-words_.

“Eh, ur, ngk,” he said, as if to prove it.

“So you’re saying you _don’t _have regular anatomy?” (That was part three of the bet; she was getting ahead of herself).

“Yes, regular bodies.”

“And gender is…?” she pursued hopefully. This time, Crowley wagged a finger at her.

“Stop that. Don’t think I haven’t spotted what you’re up to. _Oh come over for a nice wine_, you said. _Great weather_, you said. You can just lose your bet, I’m afraid.” Crowley smirked, clearly pleased with himself, and draped a leg over one side of the wicker chair. “Damned weird thing to be wondering about, anyway.”

Anathema sipped cocoa. It had gone a little cold, now. And she had promised a nice red.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. I’ll go get the wine.” She popped off the glider, gathered her skirts and discarded mug and headed for the kitchen. Crowley stayed as he way, watching the warm light of evening slide along the gardens. Best to leave him that way for a spell; get him thinking. He was wonderful for that. Aziraphale on the other hand… well, you couldn’t crack an empty nut.

“Here we are,” she said when she finally returned, glasses in hand. She poured and then sank back into the cushions. “Have anything planned for the summer?”

Crowley eyed her for a long minute.

“As in?”

“Vacation. Holiday. Whatever you call it around here,” she sipped and looked very interested in the horizon. “I was thinking about going to the coast, but Newt—”

“Wait just a minute,” Crowley asked, uncoiling himself from the furniture. “_Tell me about your sex life_ and now it’s _how do you like the seaside_?”

Anathema feigned surprise.

“I’m sorry! I thought you didn’t want to talk about it!” she protested. Crowley’s mouth twitched, settling somewhere between cool smirk and _whatthefuck_.

“Why do _you_ want to talk about it, though? That’s—I mean, ok. You’re having sex with Newt, maybe its not the most interesting thing in the world, and you want some inspiration, I get that. But why _my_ sex life?” He asked. Anathema drank her wine. Probably too much at once, and she choked down a bit the wrong way. There was the bet, of course. But that wasn’t an entirely fair answer.

“You’re my friend,” she said simply. It was true. And it didn’t take a sleuth to work out that she didn’t have many. Or any, sort of.

“Oh.”

That was it? Anathema looked up. Crowley’s mouth had gone slack, his jaw loose. He fidgeted in his seat a minute, then planted both feet.

“Right. Okay,” he took off his sunglasses, folded them carefully, and put them on the table next his glass. He almost never did that. “Em. Sexy talk, then. Is this a thing now? I try to keep up with the time, but—”

“You are going to tell me about you and Aziraphale?” Anathema half-gasped. “You really are?”

“Eh? Erm. You asked? As a—friend?”

It was pitifully honest and completely unscripted, and Anathema suddenly had the urge to cry. Which was horribly embarrassing. She managed to gulp wine instead and blink herself into a smile.

“Yeah? What’s it—like? Love like that,” she clarified, and wished she didn’t sound so relieved and grateful.

Crowley was quiet for a long moment. His eyes roved about, almost like they were looking for answers from the porch’s faded wood, or the tendrils of ivy threatening to obscure one wall of the house.

“It’s old,” he said. “Really fucking old. I dunno exactly when it, you know, started to be a thing. The—wanting.”

Anathema’s heart skipped. She hadn’t wanted Newt. Not at all. Then she had him. And now she wanted him. It didn’t make a lot of sense, even though it was working.

“Then, hell, there were all the years of thinking that was a really stupid thing to be going on with,” Crowley continued. He’d pressed his hands together, fingertips to fingertips. It was oddly reverent. “Demon, and all that. Angel and whatnot. But the physical, er, body bit? That was. Em. That _is_. New. To us.”

Anathema had forgotten to breath. This does not work for humans, and so she gasped and coughed herself back into doing it consciously. Crowley smirked at her.

“Shall I go on?”

“Please,” she squeaked.

“Well. It’s just that, isn’t it?” He leaned back, seeming more at ease. “We don’t have to do the embodied stuff. Eating. Drinking.”

“Digestion?” Anathema asked. Now Crowley laughed right out loud.

“Shitting. Yeah, the messy stuff. You put something in, it has to come out—” he raised at eyebrow at her, “Was a fucking shock the first time, by the way.” Anathema guessed that was an understatement.

“I’ll bet.”

“Anyway. Bodies do unexpected things. Celestial stuff is—well, not bodied. Still intimate, or can be. Less messy.”

“Oh my God, you mean it’s actual magic unicorn sex?” Anaethma gasped and clutched at her shawl. “Fuck.”

“Don’t go killing yourself, just yet, darlin—” Crowley swirled wine, toasted her, then drank it off in a single go. “That’s not how you do it in bodies. That’s m’point.”

“Good old fashioned lover boys, then?” Anathema asked.

“Yep. And the anatomy is as you would expect. Except when, eh, when it isn’t.”

“Not above gender-bending you mean?”

“Something like that. But mainly, yeah. Lover boys. Oh hell, Aziraphale loves that song.” Crowley snapped his fingers and the wine bottle reasserted itself by filling his glass from afar. “You gonna ask who’s a top, now, I guess?”

Anathema blushed. A lot. She hadn’t meant to, of course, but the heat crept from crown to clavicle.

“N-No, I wasn’t—”

“We take turns.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“Now who’s embarrassed?” Crowley asked, grinning wide. “You want my sunglasses? It helps.”

Anathema felt a bubble of glee surface from somewhere in her gut. It felt light. And warm. She usually only felt that way when Aziraphale was around, overflowing with miracles and love. And then it wasn’t particularly personal.

“You like me?” Anathema asked, suddenly. “Oh. Oh I hadn’t meant to ask that.”

“Why not? Yeah, I do. S’alright, ain’t it? Look—you said we were alike, once. Remember? When you tried to wreck my car?”

“I wasn’t trying,” Anathema said honestly.

“I know. If you were, we’d have wrecked. That’s the point. You are, a bit. Like me.”

“The cool ones,” Anathema agreed. Crowley smiled at her—one of the rare ones which doesn’t quirk his lips in that snarly way.

“Yeah. Well the cool ones need friends too.” He said.

“They do,” Anathema agreed, putting out her fist for a bump. “They really fucking do.”

She settled back into the sofa. _I do_, she thought, still feeling the happy bubble inside. _And_, a sharp gleam of triumph sparkled in her eyes, _I still won the bet._


End file.
